I'll have a separate post about this soon, but I've got a number of work-related trips coming up, including two back-to-back events in Las Vegas in April. Which sort of leads me to the notion of a meet-up of some kind. I've ignored/avoided this stuff in the past, mostly out of inadequacy fears, but what the heck. If you're going to be in Vegas for MIX'11 (April 12-14), or my company's Mobile/Cloud/Virtualization Connections shows the week after (April 17-21), well, so am I. :) In fact, I'll probably be there for the duration.

The Connections shows are probably the better bet for me, time-wise. I'm hosting an all-star keynote panel discussion with Aaron Hillegass (Big Nerd Ranch), Joe Belfiore (Microsoft/Windows Phone), Tyler Lessard (RIM/Blackberry) and Robert Scoble (blogger/tech evangelist) about the future of the mobile market ("Which Platforms Should You Bet On?"), but I'll be around for the rest of the show as well. If you are going to the Connections show(s), please, use my discount code (PT$) to get $100 off your registration.

Again, more on this show soon. But I wanted to at least get the basics out there quickly.

Rumors suggest that Amazon is about to expand its Prime service (in which subscribers pay $80 a year for second-day shipping on all purchases; I'm a member) to include unlimited video streaming, a la Netflix. That's a neat idea, but the reason Netflix works is that it's ubiquitous (i.e. is available on so many devices.) You can't just have a service. You have to be able to get to it from anywhere.

And finally, The New York Times figures out what I've been saying for years: Platforms matter. Of course, in this case, it's about Apple, which explains why the NYT is suddenly writing about it.

Considering what Aaron does for a living, I'm pretty sure which platform he likes :). (BTW, his classes and books are superb, if you have any interest in programming Macs or IOS devices.)

It's basically a given that he'll advocate for the IOS devices, but the interesting programming question is how developers can partition their code to make most of it portable across platforms.

Objective C is a strict superset of C, so the answer is that all the non-UI bits get coded in ANSI C. This restricts development on the Android and other platforms to the same C core code. The question is how much, if any, is lost by that, and how well you can mix/match other languages at the UI layer, if you want to do that.

The other question is profitability. Android may have a larger installed base, for now, but the business question is how many apps bought per Android device and at what price? Given Apple's audience and superb delivery system, developers probably do better there.

I know I don't need to ask - but I'm going to anyway.. Please grill Joe Belfiore on the most pressing issues with WP7. To name a few:1. The software update situation.2. How Windows 8 will affect WP7's future.3. Weak marketing.. pathetic actually. Why?

It's almost like now that MS has a great product on their hands they need to spin it off before they lose momentum. They have to find a way to imbue a real entrepreneurial culture to this division so the staff actually work with a sense of urgency. It is!